Are Female Uber Drivers Paid Less Than Male Drivers?

For the last few years Uber has been riddled with rumors of sexism at the company, with whistleblower Susan Fowler lifting the lid on sexual harassment at the ride-sharing firm last year. The incidents, which were said to have taken place during Fowler’s time at the company in 2015 and 2016 resulted in 20 employees being fired and the company claiming it was hell bent on changing the culture at the firm.

Recent research from Stanford University suggests there is still an awfully long way to go. The study reveals that female drivers on the ride-sharing platform earn 7% less per hour than their male counterparts.

The findings are damning not just for the company but for the whole gig economy. One of the supposed selling points of the model is that the flexibility afforded by platforms such as Uber favor women, but this doesn’t appear to be the case at Uber. This is despite the algorithm for matching drivers with passengers supposedly being gender-blind. The study found that the wage gap resulted due to three core factors:

“When starting the research we could see it going either way: Women might earn a bit less because they would want to work at specific, and potentially less lucrative, times that fit their other obligations better. Alternatively, women tend to work fewer hours so they might have a chance to cherry pick and focus their hours during the most lucrative times,” the authors say. “The value of learning on the job and the importance of driving speed, and how such forces affect the genders differently, was surprising.”

Under the hood

The researchers examined the driving records of around 1.8 million drivers operating across 196 different American cities. Of this group, some 500,000 or so were female. The analysis revealed that men earned $21.28 per hour on average, with their female peers earning just $20.04 an hour.

Whilst there isn’t anything overt about the platform that contributes to this discrepancy, there are nonetheless factors that support the pay disparity on the site.

For instance, men were found to drive for 17.98 hours per week, versus just 12.82 hours per week for women. Whilst this in itself is not a problem, the authors believe this perhaps gives the male drivers a greater understanding of the platform and how to utilize it to find work. The authors found that this understanding of the platform typically took around 2,500 trips, with drivers past that experience level earning up to $3 more than those who have made just 500 trips.